This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

Boys, not just girls, should also be vaccinated against the human papillomavirus (HPV), says the Nobel-prize winning doctor who discovered the dangerous link between the virus and cervical cancer.

Dr. Harald zur Hausen, who spoke to 400 researchers and health specialists in Toronto Tuesday night at the MaRS Centre on College St., recommended mandatory HPV vaccination for girls aged 15 to 24 as a first step. But he argued that males should be included, as well.

"Boys and young males, it should be mandatory for them, too," says the 72-year-old German scientist and doctor who was named as the Nobel Prize winner for medicine just two weeks ago.

Although almost all cervical cancers are caused by high-risk HPV, it also plays a large role in penile and anal cancer affecting males, he says. Males both get and give the virus so need to be protected too, he says.

He added it would be a show of "gender solidarity."

Article Continued Below

The theory that having 60 per cent of women vaccinated against HPV will afford males "herd protection" is far from reality, says zur Hausen, as fewer than 60 per cent of women are getting vaccinated.

"It couldn't do harm to have a higher degree of protection," says zur Hausen, who as well as the Nobel won this year's Canada Gairdner International Award – considered a predictor of the Nobel Prize – for his ground-breaking research that began in 1967 and culminated in this year's accolades.

The scientist whose life's work helped bring the world its first vaccination against cancer says it is an "act of responsibility" for parents to immunize their daughters against HPV.

In Canada, it is offered free to Grade 8 girls but the uptake has hovered around 50 per cent as parents balked at dealing with a method to prevent a sexually transmitted virus and some religious leaders lobbied against it. To be effective, the vaccine must be administered before a woman becomes sexually active.

"If a person was totally monogamous and had a partner who was totally monogamous, then I would be happy. But, if one partner has had (an outside) sexual experience, there is danger," zur Hausen said in an interview before his speech.

"I feel it is an act of responsibility to vaccinate all the daughters," says the researcher, whose grandmother died of cervical cancer before he was born and whose 16-year-old granddaughter has recently been vaccinated against the disease.

The vaccine is as safe as others widely administered to children, he says, with side effects that are "relatively minor." Zur Hausen is not financially connected to the vaccine makers.

The medical difficulties (such as the delivery of premature babies) and discomfort of conditions like genital warts and lesions caused by HPV alone would merit the use of the vaccine, zur Hausen says.

The suffering is great as well, says the doctor, who has visited women dying from cervical cancer, particularly in Africa.

"I've seen quite a number of cases. I know the devastation."

Throughout the world, 500,000 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer each year and 230,000 die as a result of the disease. In Canada, it's estimated there will be 1,300 new cases of cervical cancer diagnosed this year and 400 women will die of the disease.

Zur Hausen, 72, has been researching viruses since the early 1960s. His initial suspicion that the herpes simplex virus caused cervical cancer was ruled out in 1974, and within the few years that followed he showed that two HPV strains were present in 70 per cent of cervical cancers. By 1991, HPV was proved to cause virtually all cervical cancer.

He says he never felt defeated by false trails. "I was convinced I had something, that I was on the right track," he says.

Zur Hausen continues his research in Germany and has shifted his gaze to another cancer. He's now focusing on childhood leukemia in his search for viral causes.

"I want to do something for people affected by these viruses, to reduce the global cancer burden," he says.

After his speech, Dr. Joan Murphy, head of gynaecologic oncology at Princess Margaret Hospital, said, "We welcome this innovation with open arms.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com